Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (22 December 1823-9 May 1911) was an US Army colonel who commanded the colored 1st South Carolina Volunteers during the American Civil War. Before and after the war, Higginson was a prominent abolitionist, and he was famous for leading the storming of a Boston, Massachusetts courthouse in 1854 in an attempt to free the captured slave Anthony Burns. Higginson would become a writer and a socialist later in his life, and he helped in cofounding the Socialist Party of America's student wing in 1905.

Biography
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 22 December 1823, the descendant of a Puritan minister who had arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. Higginson attended Harvard College at the age of thirteen and studied theology at the Harvard Divinity School, where he joined the abolitionist movement during the 1840s. Higginson attempted to become a member of the US House of Representatives as a Free Soil Party candidate in 1850, and he called on citizens to disobey the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1854, he led the storming of a Boston courthouse to prevent the extradition of runaway slave Anthony Burns back to Virginia, killing a US marshal in the process. Higginson received a saber slash scar on the chin, which he would wear proudly as a symbol of his committment to the abolitionist cause. Higginson would also argue for women's rights during the 1850s and 1860s, fighting for suffrage.

During the American Civil War, Higginson volunteered in the US Army, and he became a captain in the 51st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Higginson rose to the rank of Colonel and commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black regiment, fighting in North Carolina against the Confederate States Army. After the Civil War, Higginson became a writer, and he helped in founding the Socialist Party of America's student wing in 1905. He died in 1911 at the age of 87.